“Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The doctrine of the cross is a bittersweet legacy of Christ to his followers—bitter in the loss, sweet in the finding. It is the paradox of death being life, crucifixion being

I hope that I die during the Easter Season. Then there may be a chance that the liturgy would include the Easter account of the two persons journeying to Emmaus, hearing a Stranger talk to their hearts “burning within” them, and then recognizing the Christ in the breaking of the

To the untrained eye, a newly-tilled garden is just a patch of ground, but the gardener sees soil replete with moisture, nutrients, air, and living organisms. To the gardener the soil is a living thing. A gardener touches, smells, and remembers the soil’s past history to capitalize on the wealth

The eyes of Jesus and Mary met for a fleeting moment on the via crucis. Because Mary and Jesus loved immensely, they could encourage the other forward through the streets toward Calvary. They knew the present kenosis (self-emptying) would hollow them to receive the greatest capacity possible for God’s life

“I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” (Isaiah 42:6b-7) Imagine God reading Isaiah 42:1-7 to you to remind

After an unusually harsh winter the spring thaw may make us more eager than ever to plant a garden. Gardening gives us many metaphors for salvation history and our own spiritual lives. Our human history began in the Garden of Eden, a microcosm of the Garden of All Creation. In

“What paralyses life is lack of faith and lack of audacity” (Teilhard de Chardin). Audacity: a great thing to have in yourself, but others probably won’t like it. The world’s most influential people were audacious: Mahatma Gandhi, Clara Barton, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Paul Revere, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“Sing out, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth, break forth into song, you mountains. For the Lord comforts his people and shows mercy to his afflicted.” We’re about three-fourths of the way through Lent, when Lenten resolutions may be harder to keep. Today’s First Reading telling us to sing and

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless” (Mother Teresa). Do you remember some kind words spoken to you years ago? Perhaps they changed your outlook and attitude, or even the direction of your life. Today is an opportunity to speak or write

Mahatma Gandhi stated, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” Lent and New Year’s Day are the traditional times to consider change. It’s easy to see that our world must change. We can’t continue polluting the air and water, we can’t keep killing one another,